Thu Jan 10, 2013 at 18:03:00 PM EST

Ken Kookinelli is busy pandering to the far right wing, of which he is a member of course. The latest example is his appearance on an Iowa-based radio show last night. The audio is here (starting at around 12:45), and it's as crazy as always. A few highlights.

1. On gun control, Cuckoo has an unintentionally hilarious line, claiming "I don't want to inflame things by coming up with crazy hypotheticals." In this case, he's talking about the potential for the Evil Gubmint to come and TAKE ALL OUR GUNS AWAY FROM US or some other "outrageous" action against liberty, freedom, motherhood, apple pie, etc. Of course, Kookinelli then proceeds to crazy slippery slope talk, about how if we had a few commonsense, reasonable measures on guns, such as restrictions on assault weapons or closing the gun show loophole, who knows what the Evil Gubmint could go after next - the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment? I mean, there goes the whole Bill of Rights if we ban cop-killer bullets or whatever. Or, Cuckoo muses, "could we be 'safer' from crime if the president just decided things weren't safe enough so he was going to start putting dents in the 4th Amendment?" Ee gads, the guy's certifiable.

As if all that's not amusing enough, in a dark sort of way, Cuckoo muses that there's some sort of "PR plan" to make the raving/frothing pro-gun fanatics like this guy or this guy or this guy the public face of the any-gun/anywhere/any-time crowd. Uh Ken, something tells me it doesn't take any "PR plan" to make raving lunatics look like raving lunatics. Just let them talk, and everyone can see what they are. But sure, if you want to believe in your wacky conspiracy theories, if those help you make sense of your world and feel better about yourself and your own warped belief system, I guess go for it.

2. They then talk about Cuckoo's supposed "big victory" over the EPA, which they of course completely mischaracterize as somehow the EPA believing "water was bad." Our own kindler utterly demolished that idiocy the other day, but shockingly, these folks don't appear to read Blue Virginia. Heh. Seriously, though, the guy who actually thinks he should be the next governor of Virginia then proceeds to pander to these right-wing talk show idiots, making a big joke about how the EPA really wanted to regulate water "that falls from the sky when it rains," how the EPA failed to sue the appropriate party (Cuckoo says that would be "God") on this issue, and generally what imbeciles those eggheads at the EPA are. Of course, Cuckoo doesn't mention that this "great win for Virginia" was delivered by a George W. Bush appointee ('nuff said?), and that it will simply mean that a creek in Fairfax County won't get cleaned up for many more years to come, if ever. Congratulations, my hero! (snark)

3. Finally, on the "Hobby Lobby religious conscience case" regarding (legal) contraception, Cuckoo REALLY goes off the deep end, claiming that "here we're going to have an example of what tyranny means when it's played to its logical conclusion, because forcing business owners and businesses to do this is not consistent with our history of preserving religious liberty, one of the most important protections we have in this country." Uh huh.

But wait, it gets worse: Cuckoo relates that he spoke to his "local bishop" about this, recounting that the bishop said, "Well, you know I told a group I'm ready to go to jail," and that he (Cuckoo) responded, "Bishop, don't take this personally: You need to go to jail." That's right, Ken Cuccinelli is arguing that people need to go to jail to prevent women from having access to a legal (not to mention absolutely necessary) product, contraception, in 2013 America. Basically, this is Ken Cuccinelli as fanatic, theocrat, American Taliban, whatever you want to say. Amazing.

P.S. DPVA Chair Charniele Herring responds to the lunacy of Cuckoo's point #3, saying: "Virginia women deserve better than an Attorney General who wants employers in this Commonwealth to 'go to jail' rather than comply with the law of the land and offer insurance coverage for contraceptives that experts say are essential to keeping women healthy. Ken Cuccinelli's outside-the-mainstream attacks on FDA-approved birth control should have no place in the office of Virginia's top lawyer and certainly not in the Governor's mansion." You can say that again!

Leesburg - Democratic candidate for Attorney General State Senator Mark Herring (Loudoun & Fairfax) issued the following statement in response to comments by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli that opponents of the federal mandate for contraception coverage should be willing to "go to jail" to fight the law:

"Ken Cuccinelli is wrong again. For Virginia's chief legal officer to suggest that citizens break the law is not only reckless, it's dangerous.

The decision to use contraception is a personal decision and best left up to the women of Virginia. Ken Cuccinelli is once again trying to use the power of his office to advance his own extreme conservative ideology and his career at the expense of the health of the women of Virginia. And that's wrong.

Virginia women deserve a champion for their rights in the Attorney General's office, not a right-wing ideologue."

Why isn't Terry McAuliffe responding to this insanity? Where are you, Terry???? Does Terry know that as the presumed Democratic gubernatorial candidate, the media will report what he says??? Is this yet another "stealth campaign" for governor like 2009???

Kook-i-nelli thinks the primary right is of a radical (mostly old) men to make health care decisions for women? But we all know that when rights collide the primary right takes precedence. The primary right is for a woman to decide for herself whether or not she will use contraceptives. And she has every right to expect them to be covered as are other medications, many of which do less good.

Democrats have been warning women that this radical, anti-woman agenda is the way of today's Republican Party. The vote 2012 should have been an even bigger landslide.

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